Untitled
by Catty Vancouver
Summary: Sequal to "From the Ashes" and "The Ellimist's Plan"
1. Sara and Shakespeare

Chapter 1  
Sara  
  
i" To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,  
  
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day  
  
To the last syllable of recorded time,  
  
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools  
  
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!  
  
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player  
  
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage  
  
And then is heard no more: it is a tale  
  
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,  
  
Signifying nothing." /i  
  
My name is Sara.  
  
His name was William Shakespeare.  
  
Of all the quotes I could have used to begin this journal, I  
chose his. It's about today, tomorrow, and yesterday, and I'm  
not totally sure what it means, but it sounds right. Anyway,  
where was I? Oh, yeah.  
  
My name is Sara.  
  
Names have meanings. Mine means "princess", to my younger  
sister's despair. iShe/i got named after a Rugrat.  
  
I've never felt much like a princess, so I guess there  
might not be anything to the whole name meaning-thing. After  
all, it was Shakespeare (ironically enough) who said, "What's in  
a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell  
as sweet." But the Native Americans, and even back in Biblical  
times, people were named according to their personality, or the  
time they were born, or how.  
  
I'm not going to tell you my last name. The others all do.  
There's no secrecy for them. The whole world knows their names,  
faces, and stories. But not me.  
  
So, by now you're probably wondering what I'm talking about.  
Why can't I tell you my last name? Who are the "others"?  
  
The "others" are the Animorphs. That's what I am. An  
Animorph. No, I'm not making this up. I guess there are a bunch  
of psychos, or just dreamers, out there who wish they could turn  
into animals. A lot of people who secretly pretend to be an  
Animorph in the back of their minds. Well, I'm not one of them.  
I'm the real thing, an amateur actor starring in her own sci-  
fi/drama with very little chance of a happy ending.  
  
I don't believe in fate. I believe everything happens for a  
reason, even though very often I wonder just what that reason  
is, and whether it's a good one and if everything's going to-if  
everything's isupposed/i to work out ok.  
I wonder if I'm supposed to live to see my twenty-first, or  
even my eighteenth birthday. I wonder if maybe I'm doing  
something wrong. Maybe I should just forget the Animorphs and  
going back to being just plain old me.  
  
But I can't. I'm already Sara-the-Animorph, like it or not.  
I'm too much involved to just back out and try to forget this  
ever happened. Too late to go back to being normal. Not that I  
ever was exactly normal. But I'll tell about that later.  
  
I spent most of today in the fiery pit of hell also known  
as school. I never used to mind school much, but recently it  
just seems like a big waste of time. Not to mention the fact  
that everybody seems to be on my case lately, even my so-called  
best friends, especially Rose. Sometimes I don't know if Rose is  
really even my friend, or if she just hangs around with me to  
boost her own popularity status. Get seen with Sara, instant  
exposure.  
  
When I got home, I went downstairs and began pounding away  
on our set of drums. Angelica, my sister, was already down there  
practicing on the clarinet.  
  
My dad owns a music shop, so we have just about any  
instrument you can think of crammed in our basement, except our  
piano, which is upstairs. And my dad just doesn't sell  
instruments; he plays almost all of them, too. My sister,  
brother, and I have each had a few music lessons, but mostly our  
dad taught us how to play.  
  
"What's with you?" Angel asked me, taking her mouth away  
from the clarinet. Playing the drums is something I usually only  
do when I'm mad. I'm not very good at percussion. I pretended I  
didn't hear her and kept playing.  
  
Eventually even I got tired of the crash and bang sound, and  
Angel was sending murderous looks my direction, so I quit  
banging on the drums. I thought about moving on to the tuba,  
just to be annoying, but decided not to. Instead, I grabbed the  
flute. I've been trying for awhile to get the notes right so it  
sounds like the flute in the Titanic song with Celine Dion, but  
I don't have enough lung capacity or something, and I keep  
breathing at the wrong times.  
  
Angel was playing the violin now. At first I thought she was  
only practicing, but then I realized she was playing along with  
my flute.  
  
Angel and I both play just about every instrument. I'm  
better at string instruments, especially guitar, but she's  
better at percussion. I'm better at woodwinds, but she's better  
at brass winds, especially trumpet, so overall we're pretty  
evenly matched when it comes to music.  
  
You want to know the weird thing? Even with all the troubles  
and excitement my life has been recently, I don't think there  
was anything I'd rather be doing right then except playing music  
with my sister.  
  
Except that at that very moment, I saw a mouse scamper  
across the floor. I might be able to handle snakes, lions, and  
tigers, but mice? That's just asking too much. I jumped back and  
dropped my flute. It fell and hit my toe.  
  
"Yeee-OW!" I shrieked. Angel started cracking up, and for  
a second I wondered exactly why I had wanted to spend time with  
her.  
  
Sometimes I wish I were an only child. 


	2. The Character of Yeerks

Since none of these chapters are very long, and the first one  
didn't have much substance, I decided to post two for all my  
loyal fans...yep, all 4 or 5 of you. But don't expect it to  
happen again.  
  
Chapter 2  
Jake  
  
iA man's character is his fate.  
-Heraclitus/i  
  
A quick flash of pain shot up my foot. I stifled the "Ow!"  
that was about to erupt from my mouth. The last thing I needed  
was for Marco to think I was insane. Normal people don't have  
sudden pain for no reason. Not that I'm exactly normal.  
  
I was pacing back and forth across the hotel room. Maybe I  
had stepped on my foot wrong. Yeah. Right. This had happened to  
me before. I'd be sitting down, minding my own business.Then,  
BAM! Major ouchie. I never really thought anything about it.  
It's probably nothing. Probably.  
  
Cassie and Rachel were in the room next door. Marco was  
channel surfing. He stopped on some news guy talking about some  
new spaceship going to the Andalite home planet. Me, I was  
trying to plan.well, an attack against alien invaders. Only one  
little problem. I had no idea what I was doing.  
  
"They're keeping quiet," Marco said.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"The Yeerks," there was a definite iduh/i tone to his  
voice. "They don't want us to wipe them out again, so they're  
keeping everything hush-hush. Very hush-hush. My guess is our  
old pal Visser Three, or One, whichever you prefer, is not in  
charge anymore. They've got somebody sensible."  
  
"Which is bad for us." I agreed with what he was saying.  
  
"Very bad. They're doing this the slow, quiet way. One host  
at a time. Sooner or later, they'll have half the human race  
enslaved."  
  
Tobias had flown up and perched on the  
window sill.   
  
"Unless their plan isn't to take over the human race." I  
said slowly. Hesitantly. It was a new thought, the Yeerks not  
after humans.  
  
"Then why would they be here?" Marco asked doubtfully.  
  
It was at the very back of my mind, somewhere in the dark  
regions of my brain. I had the answer. I knew it. But suddenly  
it was gone.  
  
"I don't know," I admitted. "They just don't seem to be  
doing things in the invasion kind of way."  
  
Tobias said.   
  
"Not just different from last time. Different from  
everything we thought the Yeerks were. There doesn't seem to be  
a master plan, or even an ultimate goal. They're just here."  
  
"You know the sad thing?" Marco said with a sigh. "We're  
going to take this to the girls, and they're going to figure it  
out in less time then we spent coming up with the whole idea."  
  
Tobias disagreed.   
  
"Revenge." Cassie, Rachel, Melissa, and Sara all said  
instantly.  
  
Marco looked at Tobias smugly. "I hate to say it, but.I told  
you so."  
  
  
  
"Maybe you guys are onto something," Sara said, shrugging.  
"Maybe the Yeerks aren't here to use us all as hosts. Maybe they  
have another plan."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"Like wiping out the entire human race." Marco said,  
apparently in a spontaneous burst of inspiration.  
  
There was a long pause.  
  
"How?" Rachel asked, finally.  
"There's plenty of ways. I'm guessing they want to do it  
nice and quick, so that would count out cutting off our food or  
water supply. My guess would be either spreading some deadly  
disease, or blowing up the planet."  
  
"With their limited ships and resources, blowing us up  
doesn't seem likely," Sara pointed out. "But disease is a  
definite possibility."  
  
"Ok," I said. "What are some deadly diseases?"  
  
"The Bubonic Plague, yellow fever, cholera," Cassie listed,  
ticking them off on her fingers. "AIDS."  
  
"What's cholera?" Marco asked.  
  
"Nothing you want to get," Cassie said.  
  
"Victims suffer from uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea  
before dying of a loss of bodily fluids." Sara added. Everyone  
stared at her. "What? It was in my history class!"  
  
"Ok, well, I agree with Cassie that I definitely don't want  
to get that."  
  
  
  
"I think Tobias is right," Cassie said. "There has to be  
another reason."  
  
I remembered something Cassie had said once, a long time  
ago, when we were having trouble with David. "iIt's always  
about character/i." She had been right then, and I had a  
feeling she was right now. The Yeerks' character was to look out  
for themselves. So why would they destroy us? They needed us,  
for our host bodies.  
  
I noticed Sara was rubbing her foot, like it was sore. The  
same foot that had been bothering me earlier. Sara noticed me  
watching her.  
  
"I dropped my flute earlier," she said, smiling sheepishly.  
"My foot got in the way."  
  
iWeird/i, I thought. 


End file.
